This off week comes at a good time for both the Hokies and the hacks who cover them. While Tech’s players rest up, we lowly scribes can assess the season’s first half, because the off week is right at the midway point.

I’ll have a midseason report card in tomorrow’s paper. In crunching some numbers for that, I compiled a list of plays of 20 yards or longer that Tech’s defense has allowed. The Hokies rank 33rd nationally in total defense, allowing 314.3 yards per game. The past four seasons, they finished in the top four nationally in total defense, including No. 1 rankings in 2005 and 2006. If this season’s 314.3 number holds up, it will be Tech’s most yards allowed per game since 2003, when it allowed 367.5.

Big plays have been the primary reason for Tech’s defensive dip, at least in terms of the stats. Consider that in a three-game stretch (Georgia Tech, North Carolina and Nebraska), the Hokies allowed a total of 1,027 yards on 168 total plays. But of those 1,027 yards, 544 came on 18 plays of 20-plus yards. In short, that means that 53 percent of the yards Tech allowed in those games came on just 10.7 percent of its opponents’ plays.

In the Hokies’ three other games (East Carolina, Furman and Western Kentucky), the defense allowed just nine plays of 20 yards or longer—not counting the 46-yard pass that Western Kentucky completed on a fake punt, because that came against the special teams unit, not the defense.

A look at the big-play breakdown for Tech’s defense (will have a similar post soon in regard to Tech’s offense) ...

EAST CAROLINA
27 pass
26 pass
21 pass
Total: 74 yards
Total yards allowed for game: 369

FURMAN
22 pass
30 pass
Total: 52 yards
Total yards allowed for game: 247

GEORGIA TECH
33 run
21 run
36 run
41 pass (touchdown)
25 pass *
21 pass *
Total: 177 yards
Total yards allowed for game: 387

* Came on Georgia Tech’s final drive, when Virginia Tech’s cornerbacks weren’t playing as tightly because the Hokies had pinned the Insects at their own 5.

NORTH CAROLINA
50 run (touchdown)
24 run
31 pass
30 pass
32 pass (touchdown)
Total: 167 yards
Total yards allowed for game: 307

NEBRASKA
25 pass
20 pass
21 pass
27 pass
32 pass (touchdown)
46 pass
29 pass
Total: 200 yards
Total yards allowed for game: 333

WESTERN KENTUCKY
26 run
23 run
31 run
20 pass
46 pass *
Total (not counting fake punt): 100 yards
Total yards allowed for game (not counting fake punt): 197

* Came on a fake punt.

Posted by Darryl Slater in • College Sports • Virginia Tech
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